Can grass biomethane be an economically viable biofuel for the farmer and the consumer?

Farm incomes in Ireland are in decline and many farmers would operate at a loss in the absence of subsidies. Agriculture is responsible for 27% of Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions and is the largest contributing sector. Penetration of renewable energy in the heat and transport sectors is falling short of targets, and there is no clear plan for achieving them. The anaerobic digestion of grass to produce biogas or biomethane is put forward as a multifaceted solution, which could help meet energy and emissions targets, reduce dependence on imported energy, and provide additional farm income. This paper addresses the economic viability of such a system. Grass biogas/biomethane fares poorly under the current combined heat and power tariff structure, which is geared toward feedstock that attracts a gate fee. Tariff structures similar to those used in other countries are necessary for the industry to develop. Equally, regulation should be implemented to allow injection of biomethane into the gas grid in Ireland. Blends of natural gas and biomethane can be sold, offering a cost-competitive green fuel. Sale as a renewable transport fuel could allow profitability for the farmer and savings for the consumer, but suffers due to the lack of a market. Under current conditions, the most economically viable outlet for grass biomethane is sale as a renewable heating fuel. The key to competitiveness is the existing natural gas infrastructure that enables distribution of grass biomethane, and the renewable energy targets that allow renewable fuels to compete against each other. © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

From Lydia Pinkham to Queen Levitra:Direct-to-consumer advertising and medicalisation

The medicalisation of life problems has been occurring for well over a century and has increased over the past 30 years, with the engines of medicalisation shifting to biotechnology, managed care, and consumers. This paper examines one strand of medicalisation during the last century: direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of pharmaceuticals. In particular, it examines the roles that physicians and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have played in regulating DTCA in the US. Two advertising exemplars, the late 19 century Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound (for 'women's complaints') and contemporary Levitra (for erectile dysfunction) are used to examine the parallels between the patent medicine era and the DTCA era. DTCA re-establishes the direct and independent relationship between drug companies and consumers that existed in the late 19 century, encouraging self-diagnosis and requests for specific drugs. The extravagant claims of Lydia Pinkham's day are constrained by laws, but modern-day advertising is more subtle and sophisticated. DTCA has facilitated the impact of the pharmaceutical industry and consumers in becoming more important forces in medicalisation. © 2008 The Authors.

Session 4: Getting balanced nutrition messages across Nutrition communication: consumer perceptions and predicting intentions

Health claims on food products, which aim at informing the public about the health benefits of the product, represent one type of nutrition communication; the use of these is regulated by the European Union. This paper provides an overview of the research on health claims, including consumers' perceptions of such claims and their intention to buy products that carry health-related claims. This is followed by a discussion on the results from some recent studies investigating public perceptions and willingness to use products with health claims. In these studies, claims are presented in the form of messages of different lengths, types, framing, with and without qualifying words and symbols. They also investigate how perceptions and intentions are affected by individual needs and product characteristics. Results show that adding health claims to products does increase their perceived healthiness. Claim structure was found to make a difference to perceptions, but its influence depended on the level of relevance, familiarity and individuals' need for information. Further, the type of health benefit proposed and the base product used also affected perceptions of healthiness. The paper concludes that while healthiness perceptions relating to products with health claims may vary between men and women, old and young and between countries, the main factor influencing perceived healthiness and intention to buy a product with health claim is personal relevance.

Exploring consumer's preferences for farmed sea bream

Sea bream (Sparus aurata) production plays a significant part in Italian aquaculture, contributing to almost 18% of national pisciculture sales revenue. In recent years, Italian firms faced higher competition from countries with lower production costs. This prompted responses toward both cost reduction and product differentiation. The objective of this study was to investigate the preferences of Italian consumers for sea bream from fish farms, with a focus on aspects of product differentiation as gleaned from the analysis of the market situation: price, product origin, type and place of fish farming, and, in particular, type of feed. Data were collected with a consumers’ survey using personal interviews conducted on a questionnaire that included a choice experiment. Consumer preferences were analyzed with choice models based on stated preference data. The models made it possible to evaluate the potential of products with different combinations of attributes for which there is currently no market information available. In particular, the country of origin emerged as an important element of consumer choice, and to a lesser degree, organic certification and fish farming in marine cages also play a relevant role and may command a price premium.

Unveiling Fairness for the Consumer:The Law, Economics and Justice of Expanded Arbitration

In recent years, the US Supreme Court has rather controversially extended the ambit of the Federal Arbitration Act to extend arbitration’s reach into, inter alia¸ consumer matters, with the consequence that consumers are often (and unbeknownst to them) denied remedies which would otherwise be available. Such denied remedies include recourse to class action proceedings, effective denial of punitive damages, access to discovery and the ability to resolve the matter in a convenient forum.

The court’s extension of arbitration’s ambit is controversial. Attempts to overturn this extension have been made in Congress, but to no avail. In contrast to American law, European consumer law looks at pre-dispute agreements to arbitrate directed at consumers with extreme suspicion, and does so on the grounds of fairness. In contrast, some argue that pre-dispute agreements in consumer (and employment) matters are consumer welfare enhancing: they decrease the costs of doing business, which is then passed on to the consumer. This Article examines these latter claims from both an economic and normative perspective.

The economic analysis of these arguments shows that their assumptions do not hold. Rather than being productive of consumer surplus, the use of arbitration is likely to have the opposite effect. The industries from which the recent Supreme Court cases originated not only do not exhibit the industrial structure assumed by the proponents of expanded arbitration, but are also industries which exhibit features that facilitate consumer welfare reducing collusion.

The normative analysis addresses the fairness concerns. It is explicitly based upon John Rawls’ notion of “justice as fairness,” which can provide a lens to evaluate social institutions. This Rawlsian analysis considers the use of extended arbitration in consumer matters in the light of the earlier economic results. It suggests that the asymmetries present in the contractual allocation of rights serve as prima facie evidence that such arbitration–induced exclusions are prima facie unjust/unfair. However, as asymmetry is only a prima facie test, a generalized criticism of the arbitration exclusions (of the sort found in Congress and underlying the European regime) is overbroad.

Wave action modifies the effects of consumer diversity and warming on algal assemblages

To understand the consequences of biodiversity loss, it is necessary to test how biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships may vary with predicted environmental change. In particular, our understanding will be advanced by studies addressing the interactive effects of multiple stressors on the role of biodiversity across trophic levels. Predicted increases in wave disturbance and ocean warming, together with climate-driven range shifts of key consumer species, are likely to have profound impacts on the dynamics of coastal marine communities. We tested whether wave action and temperature modified the effects of gastropod grazer diversity (Patella vulgata, Littorina littorea and Gibbula umbilicalis) on algal assemblages in experimental rock pools. The presence or absence of L. littorea appeared to drive changes in microalgal and macroalgal biomass and macroalgal assemblage structure. Macroalgal biomass also decreased with increasing grazer species richness, but only when wave action was enhanced. Further, independently of grazer diversity, wave action and temperature had interactive effects on macroalgal assemblage structure. Warming also led to a reversal of grazer-macroalgal interaction strengths from negative to positive, but only when there was no wave action. Our results show that hydrodynamic disturbance can exacerbate the effects of changing consumer diversity, and may also disrupt the influence of other environmental stressors on key consumer-resource interactions. These findings suggest that the combined effects of anticipated abiotic and biotic change on the functioning of coastal marine ecosystems, although difficult to predict, may be substantial.